Graphic by Dani Ramirez and Dennise Arriaza
Written by Steven Mynott
Last July, President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law, which includes roughly half a trillion dollars in cuts to Medicaid over the next ten years. Medicaid is a federal and state program that provides medical insurance for low-income Americans and Americans with disabilities. In May 2025, it was reported that 70,828,934 people received healthcare coverage through medicaid, but funding cuts will result in an estimated ten million people losing their coverage. The cuts to Medicaid are projected to have a disproportionate impact on rural America. Because rural Americans tend to rely on Medicaid at higher rates than their urban and suburban counterparts, rural hospitals are at risk of closing as patients lose their healthcare coverage. An estimated 700, or one in three, rural hospitals could be forced to close due to Medicaid cuts, but that does not even tell the full story. This figure does not take into account all of the clinics and nursing homes that are also at risk of closing.
This is all happening while Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is at the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Several major healthcare agencies fall within the department, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. He is the first person to hold the position with no previous medical or public health experience. Since the 1990s, Kennedy has repeatedly made false claims linking vaccines to autism and alleging of a corporate-government cover-up. His claims are primarily focused on a preservative used in some vaccines called thimerosal, which contains a mercury based compound called ethylmercury. The use of thimerosal has repeatedly been shown to be safe in numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies. In 1999 thimerosal was either reduced or eliminated from most vaccines, not because of any known risk, but out of an abundance of caution.
The idea that vaccines cause autism was first popularized by a discredited 1998 study of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine published in The Lancet by British doctor Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield’s study was found to have been secretly funded by a law firm that was in the process of suing the manufacturer of the MMR vaccine. Motivated by his conflict of interest, Wakefield falsified results of his study. In 2010, 12 years after the study was first published, Wakefield’s medical licence was revoked and The Lancet retracted his study. Even after this news has come to light, Kennedy continues to praise Wakefield. In 2019 Kennedy posted a photo of the two of them posing together on Instagram with a lengthy caption that began, “Andy Wakefield stands among the most unjustly vilified figures of modern history”.
In 2005 Kennedy published an article titled “Deadly Immunity” in Salon and Rolling Stone that linked thimerosal to autism and accused government officials of covering up this supposed fact. Both publications have since retracted the article. “According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency’s massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children,” wrote Kennedy. “A mercury based preservative in the vaccines–thimerosal–appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children.” Later in the same article, he wrote, “What is most striking is the lengths to which many of the leading detectives have gone to ignore–and cover up–the evidence against thimerosal, from the very beginning, the scientific case against the mercury additive has been overwhelming.”
There is no evidence that the thimerosal used in vaccines causes any harm to humans aside from temporary redness and swelling at the injection site. The same epidemiologist that Kennedy references in his article, Thomas Verstraeten, was part of a study in 2004 that concluded there are no consistent significant associations between thimerasol containing vaccines and neurodevelopmental outcomes.
Since Kennedy took over as Secretary of HHS, the agency has made it more difficult for Americans to get vaccinated for COVID-19. New recommendations state that the vaccine is only recommended for adults aged 65 and over and those who are high-risk. There is conflicting information on who is considered high-risk under the new recommendation. Notably, the CDC no longer recommends COVID-19 vaccines for children and pregnant women. The new recommendations have already caused confusion for patients, physicians and pharmacists alike. Those who fall outside of the new recommendations may have a harder time accessing COVID-19 vaccines, and vaccine access could vary by state. “Some people are still able to get vaccinated, no problem, because they’re still eligible or do what’s called self-attestation – just tell the pharmacist, yeah, I’m eligible.” said Rob Stein, health correspondent for NPR. “But the rules for how this works vary from state to state, so a lot of people are having a hard time getting vaccinated. … Some people get turned away because they don’t meet the new criteria. Some get told they can only get a shot if they come back with a prescription. Some still get rejected even when they go back with a doctor’s order. … I’ve heard about people going from pharmacy to pharmacy, doctor to doctor, even sometimes state to state, hunting for a shot”.
In addition to uncertain access to COVID-19 vaccines, there is also the question of whether they will be covered by health insurance. By law, health insurance plans are required to cover all CDC recommended vaccines in full. But now that COVID-19 vaccines are no longer recommended for everyone, insurance coverage for healthy adults will depend on what individual insurance plans are willing to cover. Without insurance, one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine could cost as much as $141.80, according to the CDC’s vaccine price list. In states that allow self-attestation, people who self-attest to a high-risk condition should have their vaccines fully covered by insurance.
California officials have broken with the CDC’s recommendation. Based on recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the California Department of Public Health recommends that everyone aged 6 months or over get vaccinated for COVID-19. Insurance providers will likely cover the shot for all who want it in California because California’s recommendation is based on recommendations from reputable medical organizations. In addition to California, 13 other states have taken similar action: Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Virginia, and Washington.
Since becoming Secretary of HHS, Kennedy has targeted officials who disagree with his stance on vaccines for replacement. On June 16, Kennedy fired all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the committee responsible for developing all of the nation’s vaccine recommendations. Among Kennedy’s appointees to replace those he fired are Vicky Pebsworth, a regional director for the National Association of Catholic Nurses and Dr. Karl Malone, a former messenger RNA researcher, the technology behind COVID-19 vaccines. Both Pebsworth and Malone emerged as prominent voices promoting vaccine conspiracies during the pandemic.
Malone continues to spread misinformation during the ongoing measles outbreak in Texas. After 8-year-old Daisy Hildebrand became the second person to die in the outbreak on April 3. Malone broke the news without the family’s consent. On April 12, Malone wrote on X, “Breaking news: Another Texas child dies a tragic death after recovering from measles,” and linked to an article he published on Substack where he where he alleged that she did not die from measles, but from sepsis after the University Medical Center in Lubbock mismanaged her treatment. Following Malone’s post, community health leaders reiterated that Hildebrand died of measles pulmonary failure.
Hildebrand’s father, Peter Hildebrand, stated that he did not know who Malone was or what he posted before his daughter’s funeral. “I have never even heard that name before. So he’s the reason I was sitting there, having to fight media off of the church?”
On Aug. 27 the Trump administration, with Kennedy’s recommendation, fired CDC director Dr. Susan Monarez. In response to her firing, she wrote, “For the good of the nation and the world, the science at CDC should never be censored or subject to political pauses or interpretations.”
Monarez’s lawyers, Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell, stated “When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. For that, she has been targeted.”
“As her attorney’s statement makes abundantly clear, Susan Monarez is not aligned with the President’s agenda of Making America Healthy Again,” stated White House Deputy Press Secretary, Kush Desai “Since Susan Monarez refused to resign despite informing HHS leadership of her intent to do so, the White House has terminated Monarez from her position with the CDC.”
The Texas measles outbreak shows that effects of the vaccine disinformation campaign, and the changes made by Kennedy to HHS, are already being felt. This, coupled with cuts to Medicaid, could mean that millions of Americans are at risk of having to fight vaccine preventable illnesses without the benefit of Medicaid healthcare coverage.
